Meeting Report from ICAR2019

Four days full of knowledge, innovative research,
interesting culture this is what summarizes my time at the ICAR2019, Wuhan,
China.

Thanks to the Gatsby foundation and GARNet, I had the opportunity to attend the ICAR2019 conference in Wuhan, China. The meeting was hosted by the Huazhong Agricultural University-a partnership University which I also managed to visit during my stay in Wuhan.

Mornings at ICAR2019 started with a plenary
sessions leading by scientists from Asia, Australia, USA and Europe who delighted
us with their latest work in Arabidopsis. In particular, I found interesting a
plenary session called “From Models to Crops”, where Barry Pogson from
Australia showed us the importance of translational genetics. As an example, he
showed us drought stress regulators discovered in Arabidopsis that also play a
role in a range of crop plants such as wheat.

Barry Pogson gave a fantastic talk!

Every afternoon, there were concurrent sessions and more interesting talks given by PI researchers and early career scientists from all around the world. Of particular interest to me were the talks on the use of Arabidopsis to elucidate biotic and abiotic interactions. As an example, Lin Li from Fudan University gave a good talk about how the transcription factor PHY7 is involved in shade avoidance response when plants compete with their neighbours. Also, Ling Li from Mississippi State University shared with us her work in a starch gene with great potential to improve protein and disease resistance in other crops such as rice, soybean and corn, using innovative strategies.

Poster Session

At the end of the day, there was a poster session and a range of different workshops. I really enjoyed the workshop called “Communicating your science to the broader community” organized by Isabel Mendoza (Global Plant Council) and including Geraint Parry (GARNet) and Mary Williams (ASPB). This workshop gave me ideas of how I can increase the impact of my work by using social media and how to share my work not only to the scientific community but also to the regular public. Thanks to this workshop I gained more encouragement to be more active in social media, considering the importance of sharing my work with others at this stage of my PhD.

I really encourage all PhD students to not miss this kind of opportunities of networking, learning, sharing your work, along with having a cultural experience and making friends from other parts of the world. Next year, ICAR2020 will be held in the USA, followed by Belfast, UK in 2021, so I already recommend you to book some time off in your calendar and prepare for another productive and exciting week of science!

This bumper GARNet Research Roundup begins with two sets of papers in related areas. First are three papers that investigate the biology of plasmodesmatata. These include work from the Faulkner lab at the JIC, the Band lab at Nottingham and a broad European collaboration that includes co-authors from Durham, Cambridge and St Andrews. The second[…]

Naresh Loudya from Royal Holloway University of London discusses a recent paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B entitled ‘Retrograde signalling in a virescent mutant triggers an anterograde delay of chloroplast biogenesis that requires GUN1 and is essential for survival‘. Apologies for the high background noise early in the recording. http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Loudya_200520_edita-19052020-12.25.mp3[…]

This edition of GARNet Research Roundup begins with two studies from the John Innes Centre. The first takes a detailed look at meiosis in Arabidopsis arenosa and the second introduces a novel mode of auxin perception. The third paper from the Grierson lab in Bristol uses innovative methods to assess root-soil cohesion through study of[…]

Andre Kuhn works with Lars Ostergaard at the John Innes Centre and discusses a recent Elife paper entitled ‘Direct ETTIN-auxin interaction controls chromatin states in gynoecium development‘. We discuss a new paradigm for auxin perception in the control gene expression. http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/200420_Kuhn_edit-20042020-13.57.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Bethany Eldridge and Tom Denbigh are co-first authors on a recent paper in Communications Biology entitled ‘Micro-scale interactions between Arabidopsis root hairs and soil particles influence soil erosion‘. We discuss the innovative experimental procedures that they designed to measure the interaction of root hairs with their environment! http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2004254_Eldridge_edit-24042020-11.16.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window | Download[…]

GARNet conducted a short survey to assess community-interest in an UK-focused webinar series that will highlights the excellence in UK plant science. Approximately 100 respondants were supportive of the idea so we are kicking off the GARNet-Presents Webinar series on May 5th 2020. This series owes a huge debt of thanks to the widely popular[…]

Chris Morgan who works at the John Innes Centre discusses a recent PNAS paper entitled ‘Derived alleles of two axis proteins affect meiotic traits in autotetraploid Arabidopsis arenosa‘. We discuss the technical challenges of this research as well as the difficulties working from home (or not) with a super-resolution microscope! http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Morgan_200417_edit-17042020-14.59.mp3 Podcast: Play in new[…]

The use of automatic image analysis in the biological sciences has increased significantly in recent years, especially with automated image capture and the rise of phenotyping. This online course will help improve your understanding of image analysis methods, and improve your practical skills and ability to apply the techniques to your images. You will explore[…]

This Easter edition of the GARNet Research Roundup begins with research from Aberystwyth University that has developed a system for studying self-incompatability in self-compatible Arabidopsis. Next is an outstanding community-focussed study led from the John Innes Centre that outlines the development of new resources that better enable discovery-led science to be conducted within hexaploid wheat.[…]

Ludi Wang and Maurice Bosch work at Aberystwyth University and talk to the GARNet Community podcast about a recent paper in JXBot entitled ‘New opportunities and insights into Papaver self-incompatibility by imaging engineered Arabidopsis pollen‘. We discuss the challenges of live imaging Arabidopsis pollen tubes growing in liquid media!! http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bosch_Wang_200406_edit-07042020-08.56.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window[…]